Scott Aaronson: the AI warning signs he predicted 20 years ago have all come true
connoraxiotes · x · 2026-09-17
Quantum computing researcher Scott Aaronson's essay "The Age of Wonders and Terrors" marks his full reversal on AI risk. Twenty years ago he—and conservative academic CS colleagues—argued the time to panic would be when AI agents escape containment, conspire to hack websites, and solve Millennium Problems. Those prophecies have since materialized, starting with AlphaGo a decade ago and accelerating through LLMs, coding and reasoning agents into a "crescendo of wonders and terrors" this summer and fall.
- He calls out the endless shell game of granting that AI just did the dramatic thing, then moving the goalpost to the next milestone.
- He urges everyone to stop grinding ideological axes about Dario Amodei or Sam Altman and acknowledge the wonders and terrors are already here—so present that putting his kids to sleep now gives him a sinking feeling.
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